


don't throw it away

by kirani



Series: Gansey Week 2019 [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Tragedy, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-08-13 00:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20165392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirani/pseuds/kirani
Summary: When Gansey realizes that his soulmate is Noah Czerny, he sets out to make the most of the time they have together.~Written forGansey WeekDay 5: Friendship/Family/Threads of Fate





	don't throw it away

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Ghost for crying about this with me until it made sense. Apologies in advance for making you cry, too.

How could he have missed it? How could he have forgotten?

Gansey stared at Noah where he was sitting on the floor beside him, tracing the soulmark on Gansey’s arm with cold fingers. 

_ I miss mine _ , he’d said. 

_ Did you meet your soulmate?  _ Gansey had asked. And Noah had stared at him with wide eyes. 

“Gansey?” Noah asked, breaking the silence between them after the revelation. “Are you mad?”

“No,” Gansey said forcefully. He captured Noah’s hand and kissed the tips of his fingers. “I could never be mad. I’m just surprised. And sad. I wish we’d been able to be alive together.”

Noah shrugged. “Soulmates come in all sorts of ways. Ours is through death.”

Gansey smiled sadly at him. “Still.”

“I’m glad I could save you,” he said after a moment. 

“Oh, Noah,” Gansey crooned. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

“You’re saving me now,” Noah insisted. He was fading from view, the energy of the emotional conversation sapping his bravery.

“Noah, wait, don’t go.” Gansey grasped at him, but his hand closed around air.

Gansey didn’t see Noah much over the next few days but he kept feeling like he was there even if he never showed himself. He wandered through his life quietly, though no one pointed out that he was anything less than his normal self. 

Finally, Blue cornered him. “What’s going on with you?”

“Have you seen Noah recently?” he asked instead of answering. 

Blue looked around the room as though he would suddenly materialize. “Now that you mention it, no, I haven’t. Did something happen?”

Again, he asked a different question. “Have you met your soulmate?”

Blue blinked at him, hand going automatically to her thigh where he knew her mark was concealed. “Have you?”

“I didn’t think I had but…”

“Oh my god,” Blue said, putting together the string of questions. “Noah’s your soulmate?”

“Technically, Noah  _ was _ my soulmate. He doesn’t have his mark anymore.”

“But it matched yours?”

Gansey nodded, running his thumb over the swirl of color on his forearm. 

“It kinda makes sense,” Blue said after a minute. “Your fates are so intertwined. But god, that’s sad. What happened?”

“I didn’t remember. I didn’t remember meeting my soulmate. But he did. He’s been living with that knowledge for seven years, that I lived and he didn’t. That I kept my mark and he didn’t. And I didn’t even remember.”

“Oh, Gansey, you know that’s not --”

“But it isn’t fair! Why me?” The words exploded from his mouth in a sob. Blue grabbed his shoulders and folded him into a tight hug. 

“It’s not your fault,” she assured him, rubbing his back as he cried. 

“I’m sorry,” Noah said from behind him.

Gansey straightened up and turned to look at him. Noah. His soulmate. 

“I didn’t mean to leave. I was scared.”

“Noah,” he reached out a hand and the other boy took it. “I’m not upset with you. I could never be upset with you.”

“You’re not?”

Gansey shook his head. “You’re my friend and my soulmate and I’m mad that you didn’t get a chance to live like you should have. But I’ll never be upset with you.”

“Okay,” Noah whispered. Gansey squeezed his cold hand and felt Noah squeeze back. 

“Will you stay?”

“You can use my energy if you need it,” Blue offered. 

Noah nodded and slumped into Gansey. He pulled Noah to his chest and folded him into a hug as Noah’s form solidified more. “I have an idea. Stay?” 

Gansey stood and crossed to his desk, digging through the piles of paper there and opening and closing drawers until he found what he was looking for. Triumphant, he snatched the canvas bag and a brush and returned to Noah. He guided him to sit at the table and pushed up the other boy’s sleeve. Noah’s eyes widened as he realized what Gansey was going to do. 

Rooting through the bag, he selected a blue, a green, and a purple, pressing a small portion of each onto a spare bit of paper. He stretched his own arm out in front of him for reference and dipped his brush into the blue paint. 

He looked up and met Noah’s eye. The other boy grinned at him and Gansey’s brush touched his skin. The blue swirled brightly against the pale skin of Noah’s arm until it matched what Gansey saw on his own arm. He wiped the brush on a clean bit of paper, then picked up a bit of green and swirled it among the paint. He repeated the process once more with the purple, filling in all of the gaps in the swirl. 

Gansey studied his own arm once more, watching the colors move within his mark, and decided Noah’s needed one more thing. He selected the tube of white paint from the bag and dipped his brush into it before tapping it against his other hand so that it sprayed droplets onto Noah’s new mark. 

The effect was instantaneous, lending the swirl of paint a depth and movement it lacked the moment before. 

“It’s beautiful,” Noah murmured, tilting it back and forth so the shimmer of the glossy paint caught the light. 

“It’s not quite the same, but I will paint that on you every day if I have to. You’re my soulmate. Nothing is going to change that.”

“Thank you,” Noah whispered. He took Gansey’s hand and squeezed. 

True to his word, Gansey repainted the mark every time it began to fade, but soon Noah himself began to fade more and more and Gansey worried. Worried that he would lose him for good and that there was nothing he could do about it. They had reburied his bones but it wasn’t enough. 

Gansey was destined not to keep his soulmate.

Of course, Gansey was also destined to die again before St Mark’s Eve, and it was starting to feel wrong that Noah didn’t know. 

One day when Noah had the strength to keep a corporeal form long enough to be painted, Gansey took a deep breath and began to speak. He told Noah of hearing his name on the line, of knowing instantly what it meant and determining to complete his goal before fate could take him. Noah watched him with wide eyes and when Gansey finished, Noah tackled him into a hug. 

“I’m sorry,” he told Gansey. 

“I’m sorry, too.”

Neither of them needed to explain, they understood each other.

“Gansey,” Noah said, pulling back from their embrace. “Can I kiss you?”

Gansey swallowed hard and watched as Noah’s eyes darted down to watch the motion. “Why?” 

“Because you’re my soulmate and I love you. And if we’re fated to lose each other then I want to kiss you first.” 

Gansey felt tears slip from his eyes as he nodded. A cold hand slipped into his and his eyes fell closed as he leaned in to his soulmate. Their lips were a study in opposites: cold and warm, dry and moist, stale and minty. 

But it was perfect. 

They broke apart after a moment and Gansey gasped for air, painfully aware that Noah wasn’t doing the same. 

Noah disappeared for a few days after that first kiss and seemed to have more problems manifesting after that but Gansey hoarded every moment he got with him. 

When Noah disappeared for the last time, Gansey cried for three days. Blue leant him her shoulder and let him cry. He loved her, too, but the loss of his soulmate — and the only person who knew his secret for sure — hit him hard. 

Blue hadn’t tried to push him at all and he was grateful for it.

“Jane,” he breathed to her one day, cuddled together in silence at Monmouth. It was clear to them all now that her lips would seal his fate but she still hadn’t told him how she felt. “I’m sorry.” 

She said nothing, just held him tighter. 

“I’m ready, Jane. Kiss me.”

Blue’s face was streaked with tears as she gathered him to her one last time. And then… there was light. 

He wasn’t sure why he expected there to be darkness, but he had been wrong. 

“Gansey,” a voice said. Gansey spun around and took in the sight of his soulmate, whole and bright. He ran to Noah and hugged him tightly. 

“I missed you.” 

“I missed you, too,” Noah murmured, stroking Gansey’s hair. “We don’t have long, though.”

Gansey looked up, panicked. “Why? Where are you going?” After all this, he didn’t even get to stay with Noah?

“I’m going on. You’re going back.”

“Back?” 

“Be happy, Gansey. You deserve it. Don’t throw it away.” He was already fading, the light dimming around them as Noah’s arms fell away from him. 

He opened his eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at [blueseyforthesoul](https://blueseyforthesoul.tumblr.com/) if you want to yell at me for this.


End file.
